How can reformational philosophy help us reconceptualise the notion of security? In the field of Security Studies, theoreticalismsabound, each of them rooted in a different philosophical tradition. One of these approaches, “securitization theory”, portrays security in connection to five “sectors” that seem to reflect some of the basic aspects of the cosmos analysed by reformational philosophy. I consider the potential of this theory in an initial attempt to introduce a reformational approach to Security Studies. I also briefly consider some of (...) its shortcomings. Finally, I reflect on the basic elements of a reformational notion of security. At this stage I am not offering a new theory of security but merely beginning to sketch a new concept of security in light of reformational philosophy. (shrink)

El propósito de este artículo es analizar el concepto de mentira moderna u organizada en la obra de Hannah Arendt. Con agudeza, Arendt pone de relieve una experiencia particular del Mundo Moderno, aquella en la que una comunidad puede falsear deliberadamente realidades conocidas por todos y tener la mentira como principio político. Esta comprensión pone al concepto en un registro diferente del tradicional de los arcana dominationis. Nuestro argumento intenta clarificar analíticamente el concepto, señalar su pertinencia y vincularlo a una (...) idea de auto-institución de las sociedades entendidas como colectividades históricamente activas. (shrink)

Arnold J. Toynbee was not only a controversial historian, but also a beguiling internationalist. This article analyses Toynbee as an observer of international politics. In particular, it examines both his understanding of contemporary foreign politics and his constant search of a stable world order. From the idealism of his youth to the utopianism of religious origin that marked his final years, passing through his partial and temporary disenchantment with regard to his youthful expectations, this essay will follow Toynbee’s path in (...) the study of the international affairs of the Twentieth century. (shrink)

El presente artículo se propone indagar los problemas que hacen al déficit de legitimidad de lo que ha dado en llamarse la "justicia política", esto es, las respuestas judiciales frente a herencias de criminalidad política. Sugerimos que se trata de problemas estructurales que están en los límites de lo jurídico y que, por tanto, no constituyen una falla del sistema judicial en sí mismo. Con ese fin, sobre la base de los análisis realizados por Danilo Zolo y Hannah Arendt, examinamos (...) problemas estructurales en tres niveles: en la imparcialidad e independencia del tribunal, en el respeto de los principios, las normas y los procedimientos del derecho, y en el requisito de un elemento subjetivo para atribuir la responsabilidad penal de un crimen. Le propos de notre article est celui de s'interroger sur les problèmes qui produisent un déficit de légitimité en ce qu'on a appelé la " justice politique ", c'est-à-dire, les réponses judiciaires qu'on donne au legs de criminalité politique. Nous suggérons qu'il s'agit de problèmes structurels qui se situent à la limite du juridique et qui, par conséquent, ne constituent pas une faille du système juridique lui-même. Dans ce but, et sur la base des analyses réalisées par Danilo Zolo et Hannah Arendt, nous examinons trois types des problèmes : ceux qui tiennent à l'impartialité et à l'indépendance du tribunal, ceux concernant le respect des principes, normes et procédures du droit, et celui lié a l'exigence d'un élément subjectif dans l'attribution de la responsabilité pénale d'un crime. (shrink)

As emerging technologies support new ways in which people relate, ethical discourse is important to help guide designers of new technologies. This article endeavors to do just that by presenting an ethical analysis and design of technology intended to gather and act upon information on behalf of its users. The article elaborates on socio-technological factors that affect the development of technology to support ethical action. Research and practice implications are outlined.

We examine access to institutions and opportunity for entrepreneurs in a rising tech economy. A significant proportion of entrepreneurs and CEOs of tech firms in the American economy are either first- or second-generation immigrant minorities. Are these minority entrepreneurs assimilating into a rising economic elite? To what extent is the technology economy segmented by ethnic boundaries and sectors? On a range of empirical measures, including access to financial and social capital, firm performance, and normative beliefs on fairness and cooperation, we (...) find second-generation immigrant minority tech entrepreneurs to be strikingly similar to their white counterparts. This study sheds new light on the institutional environment of a new regional technology economy, whereby barriers of entry are high in terms of human capital but economic competition is structurally and culturally open to immigrant minority entrepreneurs. (shrink)

Bien común y ciudadanía en una era emotivista: la política identitaria como vector de crisis y renovación del debate público Este artículo analiza los conceptos de ciudadanía y bien común, considerando la crisis del debate público provocada, entre otras causas, por una distorsión de las políticas identitarias, en el contexto del emotivismo moral moderno. Para ello, este trabajo adopta la metodología de la revisión bibliográfica para desarrollar un análisis teórico de conceptos centrales de la filosofía práctica contemporánea, abarcando diversas referencias, (...) como MacIntyre, Lilla, Taylor, Finnis, Sandel y Kymlicka. Tras presentar el diagnóstico de MacIntyre sobre el ethos emotivista moderno como factor de insolubilidad de las controversias morales y la crítica de Lilla a la despolitización causada por el atomismo de las políticas identitarias, se estudian las condiciones para la rehabilitación teórica de los conceptos de ciudadanía y bien común, a partir de una ética aristotélica y comunitaria relativa a la razón práctica, en virtud de la cual la amistad cívica es relevante para equilibrar las diferencias dentro de una unidad política mayor. La conclusión es que las políticas de identidad pueden salvaguardarse si se ponderan con el concepto de bien común, para así superar las contradicciones emotivistas del debate público. (shrink)

Past research suggests that death pushes some individuals to strongly promote religious worldviews. The current work explores the role of conceptual metaphor in this process. Past research shows that metaphors can provide meaning and certainty, suggesting that death may therefore cause people to be more attracted to epistemically beneficial metaphoric descriptions of God. In three studies, we test this possibility against competing alternatives suggesting that death concerns may cause more selective metaphor preferences. Using both correlational and experimental methods, we find (...) that death concern is generally associated with embracing metaphors about God. (shrink)

This piece outlines concrete cases of benefit sharing that occur in relation to the sharing of human (biological) samples. For example, it surveys Indonesia’s decision, in 2006, to stop sharing virus samples of H5N1 (avian influenza) with the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN). It also outlines some of the ethical issues that arise in these cases.

Two experiments are reported that employed think-aloud methods to test predictions concerning relevance effects and rationalisation processes derivable from Evans' (1996) heuristic-analytic theory of the selection task. Evans' account proposes that card selections are triggered by relevance-determining heuristics, with analytic processing serving merely to rationalise heuristically cued decisions. As such, selected cards should be associated with more references to both their facing and their hidden sides than rejected cards, which are not subjected to analytic rationalisation. Experiment 1 used a standard (...) selection-task paradigm, with negative components permuted through abstract conditional rules. Support was found for all heuristic-analytic predictions. This evidence was shown to be robust in Experiment 2, where "select - don't select" decisions were enforced for all cards. Both experiments also clarify the role played by secondary heuristics in cueing the consideration of hidden card values during rationalisation. We suggest that whilst Evans' heuristic-analytic model and Oaksford and Chater's (e.g., 2003) optimal data selection model can provide compelling accounts of our protocol findings, the mental models theory fares less well as an explanation of our full dataset. (shrink)

Lexical innovations (e.g., zero-derivations coined on the fly by a speaker) seem to bear semantic content. Yet, such expressions cannot bear semantic content as a function of the conventions of meaning in force in the language, since they are not part of its lexicon. This is in tension with the commonplace view that the semantic content of lexical expressions is constituted by linguistic conventions. The conventionalist has two immediate ways out of the tension. The first is to preserve the conventionalist (...) assumption and deny that lexical innovations bear semantic content. The second is to dynamicize the conventionalist assumption, that is, argue that presentations of unattested expressions trigger an augmentation of the standing semantic resources of the language and instantiate content as a result of this underlying update. Building on a comparison with the production of novel onomatopoeic words, iconic pseudowords and pro-speech gestures, the paper argues that the issue is best addressed by suspending the conventionalist assumption, and describes the metasemantic implications of the claim. (shrink)

I focus on a key argument for global external world scepticism resting on the underdetermination thesis: the argument according to which we cannot know any proposition about our physical environment because sense evidence for it equally justifies some sceptical alternative (e.g. the Cartesian demon conjecture). I contend that the underdetermination argument can go through only if the controversial thesis that conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility is true. I also suggest a reason to doubt that (...) conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility, and thus to doubt the underdetermination argument. (shrink)

The study tests the hypothesis that conditional probability judgments can be influenced by causal links between the target event and the evidence even when the statistical relations among variables are held constant. Three experiments varied the causal structure relating three variables and found that (a) the target event was perceived as more probable when it was linked to evidence by a causal chain than when both variables shared a common cause; (b) predictive chains in which evidence is a cause of (...) the hypothesis gave rise to higher judgments than diagnostic chains in which evidence is an effect of the hypothesis; and (c) direct chains gave rise to higher judgments than indirect chains. A Bayesian learning model was applied to our data but failed to explain them. An explanation-based hypothesis stating that statistical information will affect judgments only to the extent that it changes beliefs about causal structure is consistent with the results. (shrink)

Bietti, Tilston and Bangerter take an evolutionary approach towards memory transmission and storytelling, arguing that storytelling plays a central role in the creation and transmission of cultural information. They suggest that storytelling is a vehicle to transmit survival‐related information that helps to avoid the costs involved in the first‐hand acquisition of that information and contributes to the maintenance of social bonds and group‐level cooperation. Furthermore, Bietti et al. argue that, going beyond storytelling’s individualist role of manipulating the audience to enhance (...) fitness of the narrator, that these adaptive functions of storytelling may well be assigned to other forms of language use besides narration (e.g., instructional discourse and argumentation). Based on this evidence, Bietti and colleagues claim that the specific adaptive function of storytelling lies in making sense of non‐routine, uncertain, or novel situations, thereby enabling collective sensemaking. (shrink)

É amplo o estudo sobre Leibniz hoje: conhecemo-lo como o filósofo metafísico de tendências religiosas, como opositor de Descartes, como vitalista, matemático etc.; mas a pergunta que orienta nossa pesquisa busca deslindar novos horizontes: é possível encontrar elementos em sua metafísica que nos permitam pensar o cenário social contemporâneo? A partir das ferramentas conceituais criadas pelo filósofo pensamos que a resposta seja positiva.

According to some currents of modern historiography, Galilei's propensity for circular motion would have led him to consider this and not rectilinear motion as “natural motion”; therefore the principle of inertia could not be fully attributed to Galileo, which he would never have formulated. The question of the authorship of the principle of inertia certainly weighs on both nationalistic elements and returns of antigaleleism, while the question of its not explicit formulation as a principle is due to ignorance of the (...) type of organization that Galileo intended to give to the exposition of his physics. The author, after having hinted at possible prodromes of the principle of inertia and having reported the adverse opinions of illustrious historians of science (A. Koyré, I. B. Cohen, P. M. Duhem, P. Rossi, G. Holton), through a careful analysis of the Galilean writings, conducted on the digital versions with the help of text analysis programs, firmly reaffirms Galileo's authorship of the principle of inertia and the consequent principle of classical relativity. (shrink)

1.1.1 In a recent series of papers, G.A. Cohen has presented an egalitarian interpretation of the Difference Principle (hereafter, DP).1 According to this principle—first introduced by Rawls in A Theory of Justice2—inequalities in the distribution of primary goods3 are legitimate only to the extent that they maximize the prospects of the least advantaged members of society. Cohen argues that, once it is properly applied, DP does not legitimate any departure from equality. According to him, the distribution that maximizes the prospects (...) of the least advantaged is the equal distribution. Cohen has offered two kinds of argument in support of the egalitarian conclusion. According to the first argument, differential incentives are not necessary in order to maximize efficiency. According to the second argument, principles of distributive justice apply not only to the basic structure of society but also to the choices made by individuals within those rules. Therefore, talented people should not seek to maximize the gains they can get on the market, thereby making more social product available for the less well off. 4 In this paper, I focus only on Cohen’s first argument. The interesting feature of this argument is that it is presented as an internal criticism of Rawls’ theory of justice. My present concern is to understand to what extent the DP embodies an idea of equality and it is thus amenable to the egalitarian interpretation. I will argue that the first argument fails and that DP allows for the inequalities generated by the use of incentives. The assessment of the second argument merits a separate discussion that I intend to take up in a sequel to this paper. For the time being, I take not stance on the effect of the refutation of the first egalitarian argument on the success of the second one. In this work, I am rather concerned with articulating a novel.. (shrink)

The general tendency or attitude that Dreier 2004 calls creeping minimalism is ramping up in contemporary analytic philosophy. Those who entertain this attitude will take for granted a framework of deflationary or minimal notions – principally semantical1 and ontological – by means of which to analyse problems in different philosophical fields – e.g. theory of truth, metaethics, philosophy of language, the debate on realism and antirealism, etc. Let us call sweeping minimalist the philosopher affected by creeping minimalism. The framework of (...) minimal notions that the sweeping minimalist takes for granted encompasses, for instance, the concept of truth, reference, proposition, fact, individual, and property. Minimal notions are characterized in terms of general platitudinous principles expressed by schemata like the following (cf.: 26): ‘S’ is true if and only if S; ‘S’ is true if and only if ‘S’ corresponds to the facts; a has the property of being P if and only if a is P. Where ‘S’ and ‘a is P’ stand for sentences satisfying superficial constraints of truth-aptitude (i.e. sentences in declarative form subject to communally acknowledged standards of proper use), and.. (shrink)

Inhalt: O. Poggeler: Vorwort - Publikationen des Hegel-Archivs (Bochum) - Publications du Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur Hegel et sur Marx (Poitiers) - G. Planty-Bonjour: In memoriam Claude Bruaire - Die Lehren der Geschichte: J. D'Hondt: Les lecons hegeliennes de l'histoire - N. Waszek: Weltgeschichte und Zeitgeschehen. Hegels Lekture des Globe - B. Bourgeois: Hegel et la deraison dans l'histoire - D. Souche-Dagues: La 'fierte' de l'Esprit - Dialektische Logik und Geschichtsmetaphysik: O. Poggeler: Geschichte, Philosophie und Logik bei (...) Hegel - K. Dusing: Dialektik und Geschichtsmetaphysik in Hegels Konzeption philosophiegeschichtlicher Entwicklung - G. Schmidt: Kausalitat oder Substantialitat? - Geschichte der Philosophie und logische Kategorien: M. Riedel: Erster und anderer Anfang. Hegels Bestimmung des Ursprungs und Grundes der griechischen Philosophie - B. Tuschling: Necessarium est idem simul esse et non esse. Zu Hegels Revision der Grundlagen von Logik und Metaphysik - Entwicklung, Geschichte der Philosophie und Evolution: P. Garniron: Hegels Geschichte der Philosophie der Moderne. Eine Untersuchung auf der Grundlage verschiedener Berliner Nachschriften - H.-Ch. Lucas: Kontinuitat, Einheit und das Neue. Uberlegungen zu Hegel und Thomas S. Kuhn - W. Bonsiepen: Der Zusammenhang von Naturrevolution und geschichtlicher Entwicklung in Hegels Berliner System - Anhang: Abkurzungen und Siglen - Literaturverzeichnis: H.-Ch. Lucas und N. Waszek. - Personenverzeichnis. (shrink)